STRASBOURG —
Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło gave no ground to the critics of
her government at a debate on the state of Poland’s democracy at
the European Parliament Tuesday, saying: “There has been no
violation of the constitution.”

Szydło insisted the
controversial changes being pushed through by the Law and Justice
party government aren’t putting her country beyond the pale of the
European Union.

“I see no reason
to devote so much time to Polish affairs,” she said.

Her administration
has come under fire for major changes to the highest constitutional
court and for bringing state media under tighter government control.

Although Szydło was
careful to stress that Poland sees itself as being at the core of the
EU, there was widespread concern about her government’s actions.

“We risk seeing
the emergence of a systemic threat to the rule of law,” said Frans
Timmermans, the European Commission’s first vice president,
explaining why the Commission last week launched a probe into whether
Poland is breaking the bloc’s democratic principles, the first time
such powers have been used.

But once the debate
got going, the tone was much more measured than recent tit-for-tat
comments flying between Warsaw and Brussels.

Calmed down

In recent weeks
Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, warned of a
“coup” in Warsaw and that Poland was heading along a path marked
out by Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Polish ministers responded by
invoking German wartime atrocities.

At Tuesday’s
debate, both sides tried to soothe tensions that could damage
relations with one of the bloc’s core members.

There was such an
effort not to offend the Poles that the first address from the
European People’s Party, the Parliament’s largest grouping, came
not from its German leader Manfred Weber, but from Spaniard Esteban
González Pons.

“We should clarify
whether there is a possibility that in Poland some European values
are at risk,” he said.

Szydło
insisted that changes to the Constitutional Tribunal, and the dispute
over which judges should sit on it, simply make the tribunal more
“balanced.”

Guy Verhofstadt,
leader of the Liberal MEPs, made the spikiest comments, wagging his
finger at Szydło and warning that the Law and Justice government’s
actions were helping Putin by undermining European unity.

He accused her
government of using its absolute majorority in Poland’s parliament
“to dismantle the system of checks and balances, which is the core
of European democracy.”

EUROPEAN
CONSERVATIVES AND REFORMISTS GROUP

The mainstream
Polish opposition, which has joined in with large street protests
against Law and Justice in recent weeks, broadly sat out the debate,
leaving most of the work in the hands of non-Polish MEPs.

However, Róża
Thun, a Polish member of the European People’s Party and of Civic
Platform, which was defeated by Law and Justice in the national
election, said: “The prime minister went into technicalities that
nobody understood. These were empty words. The Polish government was
applauded only by Euroskeptic parties and that is very bad.”

Small groups of
demonstrators — both for and against the government — gathered in
front of the Parliament building in Strasbourg, a sign of the
emotions that the debate is stirring in Poland.

Nothing to see here

Despite the politely
expressed concern from MEPs that the bloc’s sixth largest member is
undermining the institutions that are part of a properly functioning
democratic state, Szydło stuck with her contention that nothing
unusual is happening in Poland.

She insisted that
changes to the Constitutional Tribunal, and the dispute over which
judges should sit on it, simply make the tribunal more “balanced.”

“Nothing bad is
happening,” she said.

She also rejected
criticism of the media law, which allows the treasury ministry to
fire the chiefs of public radio and television and replace them. The
new head of public television is a former Law and Justice politician
who is purging journalists from the network’s news shows.

“The media needed
these changes, which bring in standards of neutrality and
reliability. That’s the only aim,” she said.

Szydło tried to
reframe the criticism aimed at actions being taken by her party as a
disapproval of Poland itself — an attempt to link EU worries over
democratic norms to past historical aggression against Poland by
outsiders.

“Our history
taught us that our Polish affairs should be resolved in our Polish
house. Whenever outsiders did that for us, we came out of it very
badly,” she said.

Still, the spectacle
of Poland’s prime minister having to spend hours in the European
Parliament fending off questions over her government’s respect for
democratic standards showed just how much the country’s status has
changed since Law and Justice came to power in late October.

Until recently
Poland was a star of the ex-Communist east, with the fastest growing
economy of any EU country over the past decade and with an
increasingly powerful position in the EU.

“This is a pretty
sad day for Poland,” Donald Tusk, president of the European Council
and Polish prime minister from 2007-2014, said after the debate.